Rather than situate our litter bins at random about the park paths we need to more carefully consider the location of our bins in relation to how much they will get used in those areas where we may consider placing them.

After guests have enjoyed the food or drink available in your park they will find themselves carrying empty cups, bottles, boxes, wrappers, and other packaging. Litter bins near shops and stalls get used way more often than they do elsewhere in the park so these areas should get priority when we place bins. Although some guests have been observed carrying empty packaging onto rides & attractions and later disposing of their litter when they've returned to walking about our paths, guests who sport about our parks will hold on to any empty packaging they are carrying for just so long before disposing of it so our next thought for placing bins should be somewhat further away from our shops and stalls.

Every guest eventually comes to that moment when the product they are carrying changes into empty packaging. It is the time right after that and prior to their dropping their rubbish for which we need to consider the placement of our litter bins. While some guests have been observed carrying rubbish past litter bins (possibly the guests won't dispose of rubbish until after X minutes but before Y minutes), others seem to place some necessity in determining if there is a litter bin nearby so they may come to an informed decision to:

A

drop their trash on the path because there is no litter bin close enough,

B

drop their trash on the path because there is a litter bin near by but that litter bin is full, or

C

to walk towards the nearby litter bin that is not yet full to drop the trash in the bin.

The guest places no necessity on finding a litter bin at the end of the length of time they are prepared to carry any empty packaging before disposal. The litter will simply be dropped at the end of this time. In such cases litter will occasionally be dropped on the path tile next to a litter bin, or even the same path tile on which there is a litter bin.

The game engine seems to consider littering as being the same as vandalism, so the necessity the guests feel to drop the trash into a bin rather than on a path is vastly increased if a security guard is near by.

D

In order to ensure your guests use your litter bins the security guard needs to have a patrol area made up of some ten to twelve tiles which include the litter bin. This is an extremely reliable method and will ensure the bins inside that patrol area get used nearly 100% of the time. It is not known whether a guest will dispose of rubbish sooner rather than later when a security guard enters the equation.

E

Security guard patrol areas that are greater than ten to twelve tiles decrease the likelihood litter bins will be used within that security guard's patrol zone. A patrol area that's only three or four path tiles too many for that security guard will result in a noticeable decrease in your litter bins being used in that patrol zone.

F

Drinks get consumed more quickly than food does and guests sometimes won't carry more than one piece of litter. A guest who is, for example, enjoying a hot dog and a coffee may drop the empty coffee cup where they stand as soon as the hot dog becomes empty packaging, even if this is inside a properly sized security guard patrol area that includes a litter bin. Conversely, guests have been observed holding onto drinks packaging, finishing up their food, then disposing of both pieces of rubbish in the litter bin.

Guests who carry empty packaging and who visit a stall may throw their trash on the path where they stand so they can collect the product they are being served there by the vendor. This problem seems to be entirely eliminated when litter bins and security guards are set up as in D above. Therefore, ample litter bins, janitors, and security guards are a must to have near shops and stalls.

How soon each litter gets disposed of and where it eventually gets disposed of might have to do with guest type and guest preferences.

Because, as mentioned earlier, the guests hold on to empty packaging for only so long before getting rid of it, this means that litter is not an issue in areas of a park that are quite some distance from shops and stalls. In such areas the guest has long disposed of any packaging and if one has placed a litter bin in such areas we can confirm that it is possible to observe in the display of that litter bin’s statistics that the bin hasn’t ever been used or emptied in well over 100 park years. In these areas you may:

F

choose not place any litter bins at all, and

G

double or possibly triple your janitors’ patrol areas as their duties will be very light in such areas of the park.

When increasing your janitors’ patrol areas as in G, at the beginning you’ll need to keep an eye on how well the janitor copes with a patrol area of this size. Your janitor will stay near one end of his patrol area and ignore the remainder of his work zone if, because you have underestimated the amount of work he needs to do, he ends up with more work than he can cope with and his patrol area has turned out to be too large for him to manage.

To add to the janitor's workload, janitors don't empty bins once each time they are found to be full. They'll empty bins as they come across them after they've swept one path and are on their way to sweeping another path and in this way sometimes the same bin will get emptied repeatedly before they move on to sweep paths further away from where that bin is located inside their patrol area. The only time a janitor will ignore emptying a bin is if the bin is already empty at the time that he happens to be walking past it.

Each litter that is thrown away adds a minimum of 2% to the litter bin’s fullness, although our staff have documented the occasional piece of litter at 3%. If a guest disposes of two items the litter bin will register 4% or possibly 5% litter taken. This works out to each litter bin taking perhaps 35-40 individual litters before becoming full.

When setting out patrol areas we will do well to remember that litters and vomits are not prioritised and are not cleared up in the order that they appear on paths, rather they are cleared up according to their proximity to the janitor, and with that proximity being based on where he is standing after he has last swept the path, this means that in a patrol area that is too large for him our janitor will continue clearing away those litters and vomits that are nearest to him, while ignoring those at the far end of his work zone. A bin at the far end of such a janitor's patrol area may never get emptied although that bin's statistics may indicate to us that it is full - however our janitor won't see this bin as being full and requiring his attention, he will simply not acknowledge that bin because there are too many other tasks near by that he can't get completed. This suggests that perhaps each janitor is designed to handle only X number of tasks at any one time.

In addition to ensuring guests use your litter bins and preventing vandalism, security guards make the guests feel safe and that is another way they contribute to a higher park rating. A guest that feels safe who is in a tidy park that is free from vandalism is well on his way to being a happy guest.

At this time there is no way to measure the degree of safety the guest feels in relation to how many tiles away they are from the security guard. We can only assume that, as in D, ten to twelve tiles away is the same distance within which the security guard needs to be near the guest in order for the guest to feel safety in that security guard's presence.

If you’re trying to earn a safe park award, in a large busy park you’ll need security guards in place in order to achieve that. We usually have one about every thirty path tiles and have employed nearly thirty in some parks. Unlike janitors whose patrol areas need to cover every single path in your park, security guards (and entertainers) only need placing in certain areas. We have on occasion read that only one or two security guards per park are enough but this doesn't seem to us a sufficient number of security guards to have in any park. As a matter of interest, when starting a park with a blank landscape it is possible to win a safe park award at the early stages of park development while there is very little going on in it.

The RCT3 Vanilla manual says we should, "Employ enough security to keep the vandals and litter in check," so we know vandalism has been factored into RCT3 and that security guards also help to stop this. A vandalised park will decrease your park rating. One could actually see the damaged vandalized items in RCT2 but in RCT3, while we can point to the litters and vomits which are visibly included in our park rating, we can't actually see any vandalism about our parks. Possibly, the game engine calculates lack of vandalism based on the number of security guards employed.

Then of course there's the value security guards have to us as gamers. They look very smart in their uniforms, that the uniforms are colorable offers us another set of options, and who among us has not felt that security guards add to the ambience and credibility of our park.

Applying the information presented in this topic will go a long way towards your presenting safe, tidy parks for your guests to enjoy.